Spotlight & Excerpt: Last Memoria by Rachel Emma Shaw

Hi everyone! Today on the blog, we have a spotlight and excerpt for Last Memoria by Rachel Emma Shaw -- so without further ado, let's get into it!

ABOUT THE BOOK

Title: Last Memoria

Author: Rachel Emma Shaw

233 Pages
Publishing May 10th, 2020

Summary: Sarilla has learnt one thing from stealing memories.
Everybody lies. There's nothing Sarilla hates more than stealing memories. It robs people of their lives as surely as if she killed them, leaving behind only the husk of who they once were. Since Sarilla is one of the few with the ability to transfer memories, she's highly prized by the king. He makes her take them from his people to keep them in line. All Sarilla wants is to escape to where nobody knows what she is or what she can do, but her plans go awry when she runs into Falon. He hopes to use Sarilla to help get his stolen memories back, whether she wants to or not.

EXCERPT

Her fingers twitched, already anticipating the wonders only one touch away. She had promised she wouldn’t steal memories anymore. Did it matter that the memories she was about to take didn’t belong to a person?

Anticipation surged through her as she tugged off her glove. Not even the sight of the black lines pulsing across her pale hand and up her arm could douse it, although it did make her stomach churn. How many memories were stored within? Thousands? Ten times that? Far more than her brother had ever stolen, but he had never exactly been the king’s preferred pet.

She used to think the marks resembled delicate lace gloves, but now she recognised them for what they were. That what beauty they had was weaved from a thread of suffering and corruption.

She hovered her hand over the tree trunk and closed her eyes, trying to ignore the guilt as she touched the bark. The rough texture was an unwelcome change to the soft lining of her glove. She shut it out, along with the griping of her stomach. They were distractions of the body and had no place where her mind was going.

“I’m sorry,” she murmured to the tree as she hesitated, its life pulsing beneath her fingers in an intoxicating surge.

Liquid gold rushed her as she made the connection, her mind floating on its current. She longed to dive in and let it take her away from her bleak reality, where all thoughts of the blackvine and the king would plague her no more. Gone would be her fears for her family, along with the bittersweet memories of Falon that would haunt her until she died. In the tree’s memories, she might escape all that. She could lose herself and be Sarilla no more.

Untying her tether, she let her mind loose in the foreign tides, her world compressing into that one addictive vein.

Drawing her awareness down through the tree, she opened herself to the sensations flooding through its roots.

Cold. Dank. Dark.

There. She could feel the fungus living in the soil, a sleeping giant that connected all the plants above in a fine, fibrous mesh through the dirt. It pulsed with life, linking the plants above in a network of life that few knew how to traverse. Through it, she could experience everything the vegetation above did. Their prosperity. Their pain. Sensations she didn’t even know how to put words to but knew they existed.

It was easy to locate what was left of the army through the tell-tale vibration of marching men. The king must still be alive then. No army could retain such order after the death of its leader.

She had to warn her family before the army reached Arvendon.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Rachel has been writing novels for over five years. Although born in Manchester, she moved to London and is now too firmly rooted to leave any time soon. Say hi if you ever see her out and about writing in north London’s cafes.

 Twitter / Website / Goodreads

We'd like to thank Rachel for being awesome enough to reach out to us about this and for letting us share this excerpt!